2019 Jan 9 Phoenix 1

Stopped by Scottsdale, Arizona just East of Phoenix.  Beautiful shops.  Could have spent several hours here, but only had a short time.

Next stop was the Queen Creek Olive Mill.

Did not know there were so many different kinds of olive oil.

They grow two different kinds of olives here ones from trees that are spread out.  And others are very densely grown together.

Queen Creek brought this old style stone press back from Italy.  This is the way the olives were pressed for centuries before the new modern technology took over.

These are densely grown olive trees.  This tractor just straddles the trees and shakes the ripened olives off.  

Next stop was Goldfield, where a gold mine was discovered in the early 1900's.  Many millions of dollars of gold was mined before the mine got flooded and closed the town down.  They've reconstructed the old Western town and it's now quite a tourist trap.

Cliff having a talk with our train operator.

Wish we had had time to take a trail ride, but again we were on a tight schedule.

Town of Goldfield as seen from the train.  Superstition Mountains in the background.  Dutchman's gold is buried somewhere on that mountain.

Below: this was just reconstructed to look like the gold mine.  We all had fun listening to our guide tell us about the toilet the miners had to use.  No privacy for anyone.

Of course he had to turn the lights out to show us how dark it is in a mine.

Below the brothel.  Every mining town had to have a brothel.

This girl telling us about the brothel, showed us one of the madam's bras.  Don't think I would qualify.

Below our Wagon Masters and Tail Gunners for this trip.  They're the ones that organize everything from camp sites, bus rides, and all our entertainment.

And then there was the gun fight.  

Thought these ceramic cactus where nicely done.